3/21/18My name is Dr. Tom Cavanagh, and today we begin our journey together on how do we create a culture of care in schools based upon culturally appropriate restorative justice principles and practices.There's one key element to creating this culture of care that we need to keep in mind as we go along. That key element is relationships. if you remember nothing else from your training in restorative justice regarding schools, the key idea to remember is the importance of creating and maintaining relationships. The difficulty is that we replaced the importance of relationships, the focus on relationships, with curriculum. This goes back almost 25 years. So trying to undo the last 25 years is difficult. However, it's necessary because our children of color are being left out in terms of achievement and left out in terms of discipline. Both of these areas are related, and they are the key to why our children of color are having poor educational outcomes. So as you go through and think about your work in restorative justice, I want you to keep these questions in mind:

What are you already doing well in your work in schools to put relationships at the forefront?

What would it look like ideally if relationships where the basis and the foundation of the culture of your school, and

What steps could you take to changing the focus at your school from curriculum to relationships?

Well, that's enough for the first entry. Thank you for participating in this blog, and I look forward to your feedback

I've been thinking that I want use this blog more often to share ideas about creating a Culture of Care in schools based on culturally appropriate restorative justice principles and practices - and to have you share your ideas.So please look for regular blogs about these ideas.​Tom